Question of the Day

Should the Electoral College be abolished?

Story TOpics

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - State Superintendent of Education John White has received a favorable job evaluation.

The review was done by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Board President Chas Roemer announced the news Tuesday after an hour-long, closed-door meeting with White and the panel.

The New Orleans Advocate (https://bit.ly/1qZd7w5) reports White said he received an average of 3.05 on the observation side of the evaluation and an average of 3 on the data side. He said last year that his overall rating was 3.15.

The scores mean that, for the second year in a row, White got the second highest of four ratings - effective/proficient. That is defined as meeting between 75 percent and 99 percent of the annual goals.

The ratings range from 1 to 4 with 1 being the lowest - ineffective - and 4 being the highest - highly effective.

The superintendent recommends and carries out policies for about 700,000 public school students. He is paid $275,000 per year, and White said that will remain unchanged.

Under legislative pressure, the superintendent agreed to forego any annual pay raises unless rank-and-file state workers got one, which did not happen last year.

The job check comes at a time when, like much of the past year, White is embroiled in controversy over the new academic standards called Common Core.

White, one of the state’s top backers of Common Core, is involved in a high-profile disagreement with Gov. Bobby Jindal, who pushed him for the job, on the value of the standards in general and the tests that go with it, called PARCC.